Team MEDS Multidisciplinary Engineering Design Students, Projects to Aid Persons with Disabilities

0729870

Smith

The goal of this program is to facilitate the multidisciplinary design team experience for undergraduate engineering students within the context of a biomedical engineering design project. The healthcare industry will provide some of the most formidable technological challenges for career engineers and future scientists. Medical engineering design stands to be an important vehicle to meet these challenges to aid persons with physical challenges. The objectives of this proposal are to initially identify specific persons with disabilities (physical or mental) in the State College, Pennsylvania and surrounding area with needs which can be overcome or reduced through specially engineered devices or software. Multidisciplinary engineering senior design teams (e.g. Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Bioengineering and Engineering Science and Mechanics) of 4-5 students will be organized specifically to design devices which facilitate motion or mobility which cannot be accomplished with off-the-shelf commercial medical products. Engineering Design Teams will be matched with the rehabilitation project based on desire and background necessary to accomplish the design. After meeting with the clinicians and patient, the engineering teams will outline a proposal indicating such items as the design objectives, design approach with alternatives, deliverables, milestones, timetable and budget. For the students, this project will promote hand-on discovery-based learning through the engineering design experience. Students will gain real-world engineering experiences such as communication skills at several levels (i.e. to other engineers, clinicians and patients). Critical assessment of this service-learning project will be performed. Overall the teams will understand the impact of engineering solutions in an ethical, economic and societal context and inspire the students to participate as the next generation of medical engineers within a global perspective.